Lots of us have heard the advice that we should stop apologizing so much, especially at work. But do women really say “sorry” too often? And will it actually help our careers if we stop? We turn to two experts for insight.

Karina Schumann, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, summarizes the findings from her study “Why Women Apologize More Than Men.” Then we talk with Sally Helgesen, an executive coach and a coauthor of the book How Women Rise. She explains that saying “sorry” is only one form of the minimizing language women use at the office and shares advice on how to break the habit.

Our theme music is Matt Hill’s “City In Motion,” provided by Audio Network.

TRANSCRIPT

AMY GALLO: Amy B?

AMY BERNSTEIN: Yes?

AMY GALLO: When was the last time you said “sorry” at work?

AMY BERNSTEIN: That’s a really hard one for me because I don’t apologize idly, but I’m pretty sure it was when I interrupted someone. It was rude, and I needed to acknowledge it.

AMY GALLO: Right, so an apology was in order?

AMY BERNSTEIN: Totally in order.

AMY GALLO: Yeah. So, “I’m sorry” is a good thing to say at work, especially when you are at fault and you’ve done something you need to apologize for. But it’s also a bad thing, and we’ve – I’m sure we’ve all heard the advice that women need to apologize less at work.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Yeah. In fact, I just learned about an email plugin that flags all the minimizing language we’ve been warned about: the “I’m sorry” and “I’m just” and “I’m no expert but…” kind of language, and it points it out to you before you hit send.

AMY GALLO: Right. It’s funny we need a plugin for that because it is a hard habit to break.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Oh yeah, especially in email, and especially in the kind of email we have to send.

NICOLE TORRES: And I’m Nicole Torres. This episode, we’re trying to figure out whether apologizing hurts us professionally and whether we should cut “sorry” out of our vocabulary. We started with a study from 2010. It’s called “Why Women Apologize More Than Men.” Here’s the study’s co-author, Karina Schumann, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburg.

KARINA SCHUMANN: I came across this stereotype frequently that women apologize more than men and that women apologize more than men because they are far more willing to apologize, that men are unwilling to apologize, to admit wrong and that they’re really – it’s really about men’s egos getting in the way. They just won’t admit fault.

AMY GALLO: So she studied the problem. Whether women apologize more than men and why. Her findings? That women do, in fact, apologize more often than men.

KARINA SCHUMANN: But, it’s not necessarily for the reason that the stereotype was suggesting. So it’s not that men seem to be unwilling to apologize. If they think they’ve done something wrong, they seem to be just as willing as women are. But they just don’t think that they’ve done as many things wrong. So, they’re perceiving fewer offences than women are and women rate the exact same offences as being more severe and therefore are more willing to apologize for those offences.

AMY BERNSTEIN: This study got a fair amount of attention when it came out and you might think that the main take-away is: women, stop apologizing all the time!

KARINA SCHUMANN: And, at this point, we just really don’t have enough scientific evidence to support that kind of conclusion.

NICOLE TORRES: We wanted to look more closely at this issue of apologizing and talk about other kinds of potentially problematic language.

AMY GALLO: Because it seems like women really have to strike the balance here. Using language that’s deemed too masculine can also backfire. So for advice on this front, we turned to Sally Helgesen. She’s a leadership consultant and author of the book: How Women Rise, Break The 12 Habits Holding You Back From Your Next Raise, Promotion, Or Job.

AMY GALLO: Hi Sally!

SALLY HELGESEN: Hi Amy, how are you?

AMY GALLO: Thank you for joining us today.

SALLY HELGESEN: It’s a pleasure to be here.

AMY GALLO: Sally, I want to start our conversation about apologies with a story that – of something that happened recently. I was at a gender conference last week and there was a presenter who went up, she started doing her presentation, it was clear her slides weren’t working, and so she had this whole conversation with the IT person who was helping her resolve this issue about what was going on and what wasn’t. And they finally resolved it and the presenter, who is an expert on gender, said, “I’m so sorry, I must have pressed the wrong button.” And it was clear to everyone that she had done nothing wrong – that it was clearly a technical issue. I was just so struck by it and I was thinking, you know, what do you think about this idea that women apologize more? You know, what kind of impact does that kind of apology that that presenter gave have and is it actually harmful to women in the workplace?

SALLY HELGESEN: I think it is. I notice — I do multiple programs a week all over the world, mostly women’s leadership, so I am exposed, you know, to probably a thousand different women every week, and I’ve noticed in recent years that the tendency to almost open whatever you’re going to say with an apology has spread. And to some degree, I think it’s just a habit and, as a habit, it’s rather simple to break. And it’s really important to break it because it doesn’t send a message of strength, it doesn’t send a message of intention, it doesn’t send a message that you are fully present, and it’s a form of minimizing yourself, your presence, and your contribution.

NICOLE TORRES: I mean, I have always wondered if apologizing is really that bad? I think I used to apologize all the time for a bunch of different reasons. But is apologizing bad because it signals that you did something wrong when you didn’t? Does it really come across as something bad that can penalize you or make people think that you’re not as competent or together as you might be?

SALLY HELGESEN: Well, I do think the latter. I do think that it does signal that you’re not as competent or certainly as confident in your right to be where you are. I wouldn’t tag it as bad. And also, it depends on what you want in life. If you want to be seen as a leader, if you want to be seen as someone who can really be trusted and who can exert authority, then it’s a good idea to find a way around the habitual apologizing because I do think that it – that it does send a message either that you’re not responsible or that you’re taking responsibility for everything.

AMY BERNSTEIN: So, we’ve been talking about apologizing but this is bigger than saying, I’m sorry. Right, Sally?

SALLY HELGESEN: That’s right. I look at it in the context of habitual behaviors by which women minimize what their contribution is or even minimize their right to be there. It’s in a category, in my view, with such speech habits as saying, “I just want to add one thing” or “this will only take one second”, you know, this may not be important, or this may be off the point. So those sort of hedging introductions, which eat up time, send a signal that, well I don’t really have a right to be here or that, you know, I’m not confident in what I’m about to say or that somebody else’s impression of what I’m going to say is more important to me going forward than what I’m actually going to say so I’m not completely invested in it. And it also focusses everything on yourself. You’re conveying what your concern that others might perceive you as is as your first concern. So it may seem like a very nice person behavior, but it puts the focus on you.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Can I ask a quick question about this? I’m sorry, Nicole.

SALLY HELGESEN: Uh oh, you’re sorry?

AMY BERNSTEIN: I’m sorry, Nicole. I’m interrupting you. So Sally, you said this behavior is spreading. Why is it spreading?

SALLY HELGESEN: I think one of the reasons it’s spreading is that we tend to be more distracted these days because of the technologies we interact with, so it makes us a little bit less intentional in our speech habits. I also think that, as with many habits, it’s something we hear a lot and so we pick it up. When we’re in a culture where people routinely are apologizing multiple times for things that they have no control over, we hear that and we just start repeating it. It’s kind of like the, you know, that sort of famous uptalk that we’re discussing more these days where people end every sentence going up like this and they sound like they’re not really committed to what they’re saying. I don’t think it’s necessarily indicative of some deep psychological state. It’s just what you hear and what you pick up.

AMY GALLO: Right. It’s contagious.

SALLY HELGESEN: Yes.

NICOLE TORRES: So I just want to poke at this idea that women do these things more – that women apologize more than men or that, you know, women hedge more than men – like hedging is something that I find myself doing all the time and I – but I don’t know if that’s because I’m a woman versus, you know, I’m more junior in an organization or something. Kind of going off of what you just said, when the culture is a lot of people apologizing, that’s something that anyone can pick up and start doing and then everyone starts apologizing. So I’m just wondering if you see, you know, that this is something women do more than men or something that we notice more when women do it compared to men?

SALLY HELGESEN: Well, that’s an interesting question. In my observation, women do this more than men but that’s just anecdotal, and don’t forget, most of the people I’m exposed to are women. And I recognize that the research can be contradictory on this. Some of the research definitely shows that women apologize far more than men and others seem to suggest, which flies in the face of everything I’ve witnessed over the last 30 years, that there is, in fact, very little difference. But in my observation, this is very common. Whether women actually do it more, which I do believe, or whether we just perceive that women do it more because we don’t notice so much, it is nevertheless very, very helpful to women in terms of positioning themselves as someone with confidence, with authority, and who has the potential for leadership and to rise in an organization or in their field to begin to try to address this habit.

AMY GALLO: So, if I’m sorry is something we don’t expect to hear from a good strong leader, what are some of the words and phrases we do expect to hear?

SALLY HELGESEN: Well I would say that, from a good leader, what we do expect to hear is, thank you. And this often substitutes for, I’m sorry. I’ll see women enter a meeting a minute and a half late and they’ll say, I’m sorry I’m late. So the attention goes to them, they’re not really late – a minute and a half is not that big a deal – and their opening remark then is, I’m sorry. Now when you’re a minute and a half late, no acknowledgement is needed. You’re 10 minutes late, you walk in and you say, “thank you for waiting for me”. It’s a demonstration that you’re being gracious to the other people and it’s a demonstration that your presence in this meeting is an important one and that your perception is is that people have, indeed, been waiting for you. So you kind of turn that around.

AMY GALLO: Do you have other examples, Sally, of what we could replace I’m sorry with?

SALLY HELGESEN: Many positive things. You can walk in, oh I’m so glad to be here or I’m really looking forward to what we’re going to be talking about today. Just an anticipatory statement.

AMY BERNSTEIN: So I noticed as you were talking that you weren’t saying that we should take a leaf from the guys that we should, you know, start to speak the way they do. That’s kind of interesting to me because we have seen studies that say that women who negotiate too hard or who sort of adopt a more masculine way of communication are viewed negatively. What are your thoughts on that?

SALLY HELGESEN: Well, I do see that that often happens and they’re often viewed negatively by other women, by the way, so that’s a kind of trap to fall into. I think that one of the great things that women can bring is a way of communicating that has some degree of warmth and empathy but that is not hesitant, self-deprecating when it doesn’t need to be, and apologetic and minimizing. I believe that one of women’s great gifts to leadership and to the workplace is bringing a different style that can also be highly effective. So my concern is how effective is a woman’s style and where can she tweak it to better serve what her intentions and objectives are.

AMY GALLO: Right. But effectiveness is tricky, right? Because what is – what we expect from leaders is not necessarily what we expect from women, so we’re in that double bind. Can you talk a little bit about how to decide what’s effective as a woman?

SALLY HELGESEN: You know, I think that there’s been a lot of talk about the double bind. It certainly exists and I certainly have witnessed in my own career and the careers of other women unintended consequences from certain behaviors. But one of the things that I think over-focusing on this brings about is it can get us out of being in touch with what we might intuitively know is a positive response because we’re trying to parse everything we say in order to meet other people’s expectations and not be perceived as too this or too that. One of the things that I think is important; we need to give people time to get used to certain behaviors. I always go back to something that happened a number of years ago in my career. I was working in corporate communications and I remember the boss I had after a meeting came up to me and said, boy you sure speak your mind, in the most unhappy tone possible, and I said, “yes I do”. And I didn’t apologize, I didn’t back off, I didn’t say, yes I do but I get – you know, I didn’t go on – I just said, yes I do. And you know, about a month later I heard him say to somebody, you know what I like about Sally, she really speaks her mind. So you need to give people a little time to accustom themselves and have faith in your own responses while also testing them out.

NICOLE TORRES: What are some types of language or speech that you’ve seen women shy away from because they want to be liked or, you know, seen as perfect?

SALLY HELGESEN: Well, one of the things, and it’s sort of, you know – I’ve been talking about minimizing, and minimizing is behaviors that try to make your contribution or your presence smaller, often in hopes of placating. The other side of minimizing is too much; that’s too many words, too much information, too much background, too many details.

NICOLE TORRES: Maximizing.

SALLY HELGESEN: Maximizing. Yeah, let’s call it that. You’ll often see women falling into that trap in a presentation, trying to throw the whole kitchen sink at it in order to justify, rationalize, support, claim a right to be there and that can be less effective. You know, women tend to – I mean I’ve seen numerous studies that say that women in – we’re talking about the U.S. – use, on average, 20,000 words a day and men use, on average, 7,000. Well, women bond through using words and through that sort of close communication, constant communication with one another. But in a work situation, a lot of background and a lot of detail can undermine you when you’re dealing at a leadership level. You know, it’s like, well let me tell you – let me tell you how I came up with this idea. If you’re dealing with a real bottom line type of male or female leader who has extremely limited time, they probably don’t want to hear that. They just want to hear the idea. And so far more effective to say, here’s my idea, if you’re interested in how I came up with it, let me know. So what really we’re talking about here is being – whether it’s minimizing or maximizing, as you say – it’s being very intentional about how you communicate in order to achieve what you’re trying to achieve. What is my purpose here? Where do I want it to lead? What would be really satisfying, rewarding, and sustainable in terms of where I see myself going? And then work back from there. You know, where in how I communicate might I begin to make small tweaks that would improve my likelihood of getting to where I believe I could fulfill my greatest talents?

AMY GALLO: We’ve been focusing a lot on speaking but what about writing, like email for example? What language do we use – do women use in emails that you see as particularly ineffective?

SALLY HELGESEN: Well, I feel that many people’s emails are ineffective, women and men. My own perception of the emails that are most effective is that they’re as concise as possible. So you really do want to edit your emails to make sure you don’t have extra words, extra phrases, extra sentences. People like to read something that is short and clear. And I think emails are particularly a poor place to issue apologizes unless an apology is really, really demanded because, again, starting off, “I’m sorry I didn’t respond to your email sooner”, is just kind of a waste of time and it’s usually not really required and if it is, it’s more the acknowledgement that’s needed, not the – not the apology – a real apology. So I think we want to be – all of us – as concise and crisp in our emails as we can be, which does mean editing out extra words. I, myself, still find myself – every email, I edit just to take out the word “just”, and I am stunned by how many times I use it even though I’ve got the awareness on that. So I think that’s an important thing to do. The other thing I find useful is the idea that email should basically have one subject rather than trying to cover a lot of ground. I know that, myself as someone who is really busy and often has to pick up emails on my phone, that when I see an email of any length, I tend to put a star on it thinking, I’m going to get back to this and then of course it drops down too far for me to see it. Whereas if I see an email that just said, I want to see if you’re going to be available on September 26, 2019, then I can just say, yes or no without much more to do. So I think rather than piling up multiple subjects of things to address as if you’re never going to have a chance to email the person again, it’s much better to do one-subject emails.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Let’s go back to the point you were making about using too many words. I’ve noticed that sometimes a woman in speaking will use a lot of – I think of it as sort of throat-clearing language – and then also a lot of filler words. And in meetings, I get the feeling sometimes that women do this in order to prevent interruption. What do you think of that?

SALLY HELGESEN: That’s interesting. I’ve never heard that but I could certainly imagine that. It’s a way of trying to hold the floor because we have so often experienced being interrupted that we fear the interruption and we would prefer to sort of stammer on rather than be prepared to deal with the interruption and say, “excuse me, I’m still speaking here.” The other thing is, it can be incomplete preparation. I had an interesting experience. I was working with a big healthcare company and one of the women had come from being in private practice as a physician and she had risen very quickly in this organization and was the global head of all their diabetes research. And one question I asked her was, what do you think is primarily responsible for your meteoric rise here? And she said, “I know what it is, it’s that I’m very, very concise.” She said, “I learned to be concise because, as a physician in private practice with the onerous requirements on time that the health insurance industry gives us, I often had to communicate life or death information in a very, very brief period of time where there was a lot of emotion involved”, she said, “so I learned to prepare precisely in order to be as concise as I could.” One of the things that she noticed – and this was fascinating – she said, you know that thing that we all know where a woman says something in a meeting and it doesn’t really get noticed and then a little later a guy says pretty much the same thing and brags, “oh, a fabulous idea, Jack, that’s just great”, and the woman is thinking, “okay, didn’t anybody notice I said it?” She said that in her observation, sometimes when that happens – sometimes it’s just, you know, the guy stepping on the woman, she said – but sometimes it’s actually the guy rephrasing it in a more concise way that he thinks the other people in the room will be able to understand because they have gotten lost because the woman used a lot of words.

AMY GALLO: What if you decide to change these habits – so you cut out words, you are more concise, more direct – and then you get negative feedback. Someone says, you know, your elbows certainly are sharp or, you know, could you tone the language down a little bit or, you know, tone your attitude down a little bit – what do you do with that?

SALLY HELGESEN: I think there are a number of responses there that can be really effective. When somebody says, “Oh, your elbows are certainly sharp.” First of all, it’s kind of like me with, you know, you really speak your mind – they may get a little bit used to that or you could say, “my elbows may seem sharp, I’m practicing being clearer, more concise, and more direct and I may not be there quite yet, if you have any thoughts about how I could tweak that, that would be helpful”, and then you can listen to those. You don’t have to take that advice; it may be good advice, it may be poor advice, it may be well intended, it may be ill-intended but just asking and sort of turning it around is very helpful.

AMY GALLO: Right. I get the need to do that – to sort of bring people along as you make change – but I also wonder if that negative feedback – I still go back to the fact that that kind of negative feedback might be based on gender bias or might be meant to undercut you.

SALLY HELGESEN: Well, both those things are true. If it’s meant to undercut you, all you can do is, you know, just sort of acknowledge it and move on. You know, you want to be very aware – I mean there are always situations where people are out to undercut us, especially if we’re moving up into a position and they may perceive it as threatening their own self-interest. They do that to men and they do that to women. You know, that’s the political aspect of living in organizations and the real world. Part of our responsibility to ourselves is to not let that happen without being very reactive about it – are you trying to – you know, that sort of stuff which is never going to – never really going to help. And if it’s the result of bias, then I think it’s particularly important to kind of stick with it in a way that’s non-defensive and open – okay, well that’s – I’ll take your feedback into account – and that sort of thing – not defensive about it. But to recognize that changing people’s perceptions is going to take time but if we back off prematurely because we receive some negative feedback or we fear getting negative feedback or somebody somewhere might be unhappy or it might stir up the bias the feel, then I think we’ll never make that progress forward.

AMY GALLO: Sally, if there’s one thing you could tell our listeners about language and how they might change the way they speak or interact with people at work, what would that one tip be?

SALLY HELGESEN: That one tip would be to identify something that you think could make you more effective – one thing – not, oh, I’ve got, you know, I do all these things – one thing and then engage other people to watch you. Start with someone you really trust but, after you get comfortable with it, you can engage a lot of people. But I think bringing other people into the process from the get-go is going to give you more ideas. You’re going to get more comfortable with the mistakes or, you know, times when you fall short of your own expectations, and you’re going to manage perception. So I think getting other people involved is key.

NICOLE TORRES: So I got advice, like early on in my career – or whatever, five years ago – from a boss to not apologize so much in a meeting. I think we mentioned this on a previous episode. But I was basically presenting at a meeting and I had terrible slides and I kept apologizing for them in the meeting, you know, thinking that that was kind of funny but also just – I was awkward and, you know pretty nervous being up there and it helped to diffuse some of that nervousness, I think. But then afterwards, you know, I thought the presentation went terribly but my boss said like, that was great, just – my one advice to you is stop apologizing while you’re presenting – there’s no need for it, it’s not super helpful. And she said it so directly and I have internalized that, I think, and have thought about, you know, why I apologize – the different reasons for it. I think apologies are really important and super useful and some people should apologize more but then there are also times where you don’t need to apologize, you know, they’re not serving you well – all the things that Sally mentioned. I don’t know if that’s necessarily something that women do more than men. Like there are a lot of men I see who are also apologizing for things they don’t need to be apologizing for. So I’ve really thought about that personally and, now when I see people apologize for things they shouldn’t be apologizing for, I will just say like, please do not apologize for that, you do not need to apologize for that. So it’s advice I’ve taken to heart but I’m also now kind of like loosening my firm stance against apologizing for things. A lot of the time I don’t think it’s – I don’t think it’s that harmful. You know, if I look back and I’m like, have I become more successful now that I’m not apologizing for, you know, silly small things? I don’t know. I think apologizing signals good intent in a lot of cases and you know what Sally was saying about apologizing as taking responsibility for things and if you’re apologizing too much, it can seem like you don’t know what you should take responsibility for and what you shouldn’t. I think that’s super insightful because there are some things you don’t need to take responsibility for but there are other things that like – just someone taking responsibility for something for the team, I think, can be motivating or helpful for a team. So I don’t think it’s all that – all that bad, and I’m trying to lighten up when I’m like, you know, don’t apologize for something or when I’m telling someone not to apologize to me.

AMY BERNSTEIN: But when you’re apologizing, I think it’s important to ask yourself why you’re apologizing. If you’re apologizing because something went wrong and it needs to be acknowledged and someone needs to take responsibility, fine, that’s a legit apology but if what you’re really looking for is permission to be part of this conversation then you need to ask yourself what the effect of the apology is. So if you’re asking for permission, that’s one thing, and don’t do that.

AMY GALLO: So there’s two questions I ask myself before I apologize – and I usually do this in email – is, one: am I genuinely sorry because I don’t want to apologize when I actually don’t feel that disingenuous, right? And, two: is it my fault? And I think – I say this when I feel sick too. I’ll often apologize for having to cancel something and I’m like, I didn’t choose to get sick right now.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Well, I think sometimes people apologize to call attention to themselves.

AMY GALLO: Sure. Or to ask someone to do something for them. Like there is something – there’s something that really focusses the attention on yourself but then also asks the other person to say, oh it’s okay, or, no problem – like you’re sort of asking someone to forgive you.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Right, exactly. But asking as a manager or a teammate – asking someone to forgive you for asking them to do their job is a weird egotistical bang shot. You know?

ANMY GALLO: Yeah, I mean, one of the things that struck me as Sally was talking is that a lot of this language, I think for women and for me, is relational. It’s a way of showing the person, I’m in this relationship with you. And I think, while that’s the intention, some of the alternative language she gave us is much more effective at that. Yeah, thank you for waiting – right – like that’s also relational. Why wouldn’t you say that?

AMY BERNSTEIN: Exactly. And it also moves the conversation along. You know I’m sorry stops a conversation. It just stops it cold and there has to be this acknowledgement and, you know – you know – oh my God, don’t even go there.

AMY GALLO: Right. Yeah, the thing that I have to say, like was a knife in the heart was when she said about emails – don’t start emails with, sorry for not responding sooner. I do that all the time.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Yeah, I do that too.

NICOLE TORRES: Me too, but I’ve found a way to not do that. I realize –

AMY GALLO: Ooh, what is it?

NICOLE TORRES: So instead of saying, “I’m sorry for the delay” or whatever – maybe this is a cop-out and it’s not actually better – but I’ve started saying, you know, “apologies for this” – like here are my apologies for replying a little bit late. I recognize that, you know, it’s on me for not replying but, like, I’m not so sorry about it.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Well, I do exactly the same thing and I use that language but I do think that, if you just – so when we’re late – let’s just think about that situation. When we’re late in responding, it’s because someone is asking something of us and it’s just taken awhile to get to it and, unless you’re egregiously late – and only you can really be the judge of that – all people really want is the answer, so get to the point. I was ready to stand up and cheer when she was talking about being concise.

AMY GALLO: You are so concise, Amy B. I mean I have to say that is – as we were listening to her talk, I thought, “Amy is really a model in this.” Your emails are concise, your questions are concise, you’re really good at it. What have you done to do that?

AMY BERNSTEIN: I don’t know where it comes from. All I know is I have a short attention span and unless you get to the point, I’m looking at my phone. So that may be it – it may just be more of an index to my very short attention span. Plus, one thing I’ve learned is that, if you don’t say what you’re thinking and if you – and if you really do know your mind on something – it’s not fair not to say it. Right? I mean if I know that – if, Nicole, you and I are working on something together – and we do that from time-to-time – and I really know which, you know, what it should look like at the end and I don’t tell you, Nicole, does that help you? You want to help people thrive in whatever situation you find yourself in. You want to get the project where it needs to go, you want people to feel great about getting it there – why are we apologizing?

AMY GALLO: Why is it so hard then? Nicole, why is it so hard?

NICOLE TORRES: Well, I think a lot of the time fault is placed on women. Like we kind of expect women to take the fault for things or we penalize them way more harshly than men – like there is research on that – when they make mistakes. And so I feel like it has become socialized to take more responsibility. Like that research that we talked about was really fascinating that men and women apologize equally proportionally to when they think they need to, but women just think they need to apologize more than men. And I think that should be corrected. Like I don’t know why that is the case but I think one reason for that is that, you know, society tells women that they need to minimize, take up less space, and apologize for things that they might not have control over.

AMY BERNSTEIN: I also think, with men, sometimes it’s intentional and it’s a tactic to draw attention away from whatever went wrong. So I’m not going to apologize for this thing because I don’t want to spend any more time focused on it.

AMY GALLO: Right. I don’t want to bring attention to my mistake.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Yeah, and that’s when I get a little pissed off. You know, if you messed up then, you know, you at least ought to acknowledge it. Right?

NICOLE TORRES: Yeah. But I will say on the concise point – because that is something that I have learned from Amy B. too and something that we talked about in a previous episode. You know, thinking about what other people really need from you in an email, in a correspondence, has definitely made me more of a concise email writer. I think I’m much more direct. I try to take out “just” every time I can, and I think that has been more effective. It was kind of uncomfortable at first, you know, not adding all the bells and whistles of why I’m writing you, what I’m thinking, but I think it was really, really good advice that’s served me well.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Also think about impact. What’s more effective: 5,000 words that say yes or one word that says yes?

NICOLE TORRES: Well that’s the thing, I have to say sometimes I’m writing these emails and I’m like, I’m an editor, why can I not say this in one sentence?

AMY BERNSTEIN: Because you’re afraid that the recipient of your email is going to have an unhappy moment.

AMY GALLO: Exactly.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Well, it’s going to happen one way or the other.

AMY GALLO: Well – but I don’t think we can underplay the potential backlash for women and I think – I think we – you know, we got a letter – an email from a listener who talked about being concise and being direct in her organization and that she was told by her male colleagues that she was scary. And I think that that is very real – is that I could write the same exact email as our co-worker who could sign it with a male name and it would be interpreted differently. I don’t think we can underestimate that.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Absolutely true. And maybe you deal with it in the moment.

AMY GALLO: How do you mean?

AMY BERNSTEIN: I mean if someone says, “Amy Gallo, you know, you are so direct, you’re kind of scary.” Then I think the answer is, you’re pretty easily scared aren’t you?

AMY GALLO: That’s a great – can you write all my responses?

AMY BERNSTEIN: Yes, I will happily write all your responses. But you know, I totally agree with Sally – you can’t let people get in your head and you have to think about your purpose. The other thing you can say in that situation is, you know what, I know that you are really busy and I’m trying to be thoughtful of your time, so I thought I’d just get to the point. And then there’s the other thing you can say which is nothing at all.

AMY GALLO: Exactly.

AMY BERNSTEIN: And let that stupid comment hang in the air.

AMY GALLO: Or even, I’ll take that into consideration – like, you know – or, noted.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Yeah, don’t say you’ll take it into consideration if you have no intention of taking it into consideration.

NICOLE TORRES: And then I think it becomes about being strategic. You know, if I think me and so many other women I know have gotten just endless advice about what to say and what to not say. But I think at some point you have to just stop caring about all of the conflicting advice about how to carry yourself and how to present yourself to other people and instead focus on what you want and what you care about and you can be strategic in that way. Like, you don’t want to apologize for these things but you do want to be seen as whatever kind of leader and you’re going to use this type of language because it will help you and it will help the people that you care about.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Exactly.

AMY GALLO: My takeaway is ask yourself: what do I want in this situation? And what’s the language that will help me get there?